Last month, news broke that the U.S. was withholding military aid earmarked for Lebanon, inviting speculation about a putative policy shift in the Trump administration and then criticism by those who deemed such a shift ill-advised. The aid was released by December 2, and it turned out that the holdup was purely bureaucratic in nature. But, writes Tony Badran, the arguments put forth in favor of continued support for the Lebanese military remain unconvincing, and an actual change of policy would be welcome:

For the past seven years, as Hizballah prosecuted its war in Syria, the Lebanese military coordinated closely with it and protected the group’s rear and logistical routes. During battles in eastern Lebanon against Syrian militants in 2017, the Lebanese military deployed jointly with Hizballah and provided it with fire support, using U.S.-supplied munitions and systems.

When Israel uncovered Hizballah cross-border attack tunnels late last year, Lebanon’s military denied the United Nations interim force in the country access to the sites for inspection. Hizballah sites for upgrading rockets into precision missiles are situated near Lebanese military bases that receive U.S. aid.

With the eruption of protests in mid-October, backers of the aid [claimed that] supporting the Lebanese military is critical because it protects the protesters against attacks by Hizballah’s thugs. . . . In some cases, the Lebanese military [indeed] stood between protesters and [Hizballah] goons, although it did not disarm or arrest those goons. In other cases, it either stood aside and did nothing, especially in Shiite areas and in Beirut, or it actively broke up protests, forcibly reopened roads blocked by the demonstrators, or harassed, arrested, and roughed [them] up.

[More importantly, however], the statutory basis for U.S. aid is not grounded in whether Lebanese forces protect protesters, but in what the forces are doing to disarm Hizballah [as required by UN Security Council resolutions]: nothing. It’s not just because [particular] units or commanders are under Hizballah’s sway. It’s because the government and political order in which the Lebanese military operates is run by Hizballah. . . . The people in Lebanon today are protesting against this very political order, the same one U.S. policy is predicated on stabilizing and propping up.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.